Katrin MacPhee English 2773 The Journalism of John McPhee February 14th 2010 Response to “Release” I think the title of this piece reflects the relief writer Robert Russell feels about his new independence. He lost his vision at age five due to an accident and a subsequent infection. Despite successfully gaining degrees in English literature from prestigious universities and becoming a professor at Oxford, he still struggled to do what he loved best of all. With an old typewriter he was stuck typing as well as he could and getting his wife, also an English professor, to edit it for him. This felt, to him, like a “terrible dependence.” Today (well, in 1987, when the piece was written), however, Russell has been liberated through the ECHO G.P. program on his I.B.M. PC. This program reads outloud whatever Russel types, giving him a kind of self-sufficiency he has never had before. The machine is not without flaws, however, and speaks in a robotic, almost French accent. Like George Bernard Shaw, it spells fish as “ghoti” (it makes sense when you spell it out). Phrases like “it’s time for my dream girl to begin dreaming” come out as “it’s time for my dream jirl to be jinn dreaming.” Still, McPhee says “to watch Russell at work, writing, may be the closest thing to a miracle we have ever seen.” This is a very sympathetic study of how a piece of simple (to use modern day humans, anyway) technology has had such a profound impact on a man’s life. What I really like about McPhee’s writing is how he gets truly involved with, and really seems to care, about every subject he writes about. Nothing, from an primeval forest, to a stretch of desert, to a single human being, is too small to escape his notice. He is a rare storyteller, someone who can paint broad narratives that sweep across time or space, or who can focus in on a single individual. He relates to the public the intricacies of their lives, as if to show how each of us are really newsworthy in our own way. This is a thought-provoking piece. Rarely do most able-bodied people pause to think about how difficult even the simplest tasks would be if we were disabled in some way. McPhee presents this to us in a subtle way, allowing Russell to tell his story for himself. By narrowing the article’s focus to how a single piece of technology has affected one man, he provides a lens through which we can discuss how unaccessible our world is to so many. He does this without ever saying so in as many words, without adopting a preach-y tone. This article was a nice counterpart to the few articles of McPhee’s that I have read so far. Many could, on the basis of his more environmentally-oriented articles, accuse him of being “anti-progress”, someone who dislikes the modern world for all its focus on development and technology. It is clear that McPhee welcomes the ECHO for the positive impact it has had on Russell’s life. After reading this piece I felt that, while he may be a conservationist, he may be in favour of technology and development when it can greatly enhance the quality of someone’s life.
English 2773
The Journalism of John McPhee
February 14th 2010
Response to “Release”
I think the title of this piece reflects the relief writer Robert Russell feels about his new independence. He lost his vision at age five due to an accident and a subsequent infection. Despite successfully gaining degrees in English literature from prestigious universities and becoming a professor at Oxford, he still struggled to do what he loved best of all. With an old typewriter he was stuck typing as well as he could and getting his wife, also an English professor, to edit it for him. This felt, to him, like a “terrible dependence.” Today (well, in 1987, when the piece was written), however, Russell has been liberated through the ECHO G.P. program on his I.B.M. PC. This program reads outloud whatever Russel types, giving him a kind of self-sufficiency he has never had before. The machine is not without flaws, however, and speaks in a robotic, almost French accent. Like George Bernard Shaw, it spells fish as “ghoti” (it makes sense when you spell it out). Phrases like “it’s time for my dream girl to begin dreaming” come out as “it’s time for my dream jirl to be jinn dreaming.” Still, McPhee says “to watch Russell at work, writing, may be the closest thing to a miracle we have ever seen.”
This is a very sympathetic study of how a piece of simple (to use modern day humans, anyway) technology has had such a profound impact on a man’s life. What I really like about McPhee’s writing is how he gets truly involved with, and really seems to care, about every subject he writes about. Nothing, from an primeval forest, to a stretch of desert, to a single human being, is too small to escape his notice. He is a rare storyteller, someone who can paint broad narratives that sweep across time or space, or who can focus in on a single individual. He relates to the public the intricacies of their lives, as if to show how each of us are really newsworthy in our own way.
This is a thought-provoking piece. Rarely do most able-bodied people pause to think about how difficult even the simplest tasks would be if we were disabled in some way. McPhee presents this to us in a subtle way, allowing Russell to tell his story for himself. By narrowing the article’s focus to how a single piece of technology has affected one man, he provides a lens through which we can discuss how unaccessible our world is to so many. He does this without ever saying so in as many words, without adopting a preach-y tone. This article was a nice counterpart to the few articles of McPhee’s that I have read so far. Many could, on the basis of his more environmentally-oriented articles, accuse him of being “anti-progress”, someone who dislikes the modern world for all its focus on development and technology. It is clear that McPhee welcomes the ECHO for the positive impact it has had on Russell’s life. After reading this piece I felt that, while he may be a conservationist, he may be in favour of technology and development when it can greatly enhance the quality of someone’s life.